


Signature

by ap_trash_compactor



Category: Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Fluff, Manipulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 14:45:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16431446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ap_trash_compactor/pseuds/ap_trash_compactor
Summary: Who knew getting a present could be such a drama? Imperial Paranoia is a helluva drug.(Set about two and a half years into the future of A Dealer in Hope, if you're reading that.)





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**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers are for a couple of "whats" but not for any "hows" or "whys." You've been warned. 
> 
> Rating is for a tiny bit of slightly less than nice behavior shipboard.
> 
> Inspired by this tumblr post: https://arihndas-pryce.tumblr.com/post/179497061524/margotkim-margotkim-so-i-came-home-from-work
> 
> And finally posted because something in the insane crack channel of the thryce discord. :P

It's in her office, in the center of her desk. The box.  
  
It's small and perfectly square, simple and elegant: dark, polished wood with shining metal fittings, quite plain.  
  
“Jadnah?” she calls to her aide, one of her hand-picked Lothal exemplars.   
  
The tall, angular girl, who is only working in Arihnda’s Coruscant office on her Summer break from the Imperial Academy on Lothal, appears in the door. Her dark hair is twisted loosely back from her sun-kissed face in a style that is a little less military than the image Arihnda prefers her staff to project. “Yes ma’am?”  
  
“What is this?”  
  
Jadnah frowns, a deep furrow plowing its way between her brows — which have recently begun to be styled, perhaps unconsciously, like Arihnda's own. “I don't —” She catches herself. Arihnda doesn't like anyone to say I don’t know. Arihnda doesn't like her subordinates to waste her time with anything that doesn't give her new information. “I didn't open it,” she corrects herself. “It came by private courier service, one of the unmarked ones. I ran a proper security scan on it, and there's nothing dangerous inside.”  
  
Arihnda looks at the box for a moment more. Jadnah’s story isn't all that illuminating, but she at least has the right idea about how she is supposed to talk. She'd at least tried. “It didn't have a card with it? Data, flimsi, paper?”  
  
“No, ma’am,” Jadnah says. She shifts her hands in a way that indicates a bit of anxiety, but she doesn't move her feet, or let it come into her voice.   
  
_Good girl,_ Arihnda thinks. “And the courier? Can you describe him?”  
  
Jadnah’s broad mouth twists unhappily. She takes a little longer than she should to answer. “I can try, ma’am.”  
  
Arihnda bites back an irritated sigh. She does not quite have Thrawn’s patience with her subordinates, yet — but she is learning, she thinks. Her junior staff give her good practice. “Try, then,” she says.  
  
Jadnah’s description of the courier is… well, it's an attempt. Arihnda lets herself sigh aloud, this time. But she forces herself to speak politely. “Alright. Thank you, Jadnah. You can go.”  
  
“Yes ma’am,” Jadnah says, this time obviously unhappy. She's a ferociously ambitious thing, as are all of Arihnda’s carefully selected junior staff, but she's a little too earnest for Coruscant. When she feels she's failed, it's written all over her dramatic, sharply-carved features.  
  
Arihnda worries about those features, sometimes: worries about how they make Jadnah look a little older than she is, worries about the kinds of Coruscanti wildlife who wouldn't care about her age either way, worries about all the waste and loss of future potential that might result if the wrong sort of blow should ever come too hard from the wrong angle.   
  
She has these kinds of worries more than she'd anticipated before she’d started trying to copy Thrawn’s method of cultivating young talent. She's still not quite as good as he is at trusting her little… whatever they are. Loth-kittens is what the chiefest among them likes to say, but only when no one but Arihnda can hear. She tolerates that: protégé’s privilege, she supposes. Whatever they are, she’s still not good at trusting them to look after themselves.  


The most frustrating part of dealing with any of them is all the copious _not doing_ that’s involved. Deciding she thinks they can be more than what they are, choosing them for their qualities, and then stepping back. Not telling them precisely how things should be done. Watching them stumble and fall and sometimes even fail, and only telling them what should have happened afterwards… and then watching it all over again. It’s irritating for all the reasons that make sense, of course — but more often, and to her surprise, it’s upsetting in a sharply aching, melancholic sort of way that doesn’t make any sense at all.   
  
_All it is in the power of a teacher to do is to show,_ Thrawn had said once. I _t is the responsibility of the student to learn._ _  
_   
Well, she can at least show Jadnah how to recognize most of the different “unmarked” courier services for hire on Coruscant, she decides. They're all marked, if you know what to look for — and Arihnda does.  
  
“Jadnah,” she calls. The girl comes back. “Clear tomorrow’s schedule.”  
  
“Ma’am?”  
  
“My schedule,” she says, over-enunciating from annoyance at having to repeat herself, “tomorrow. Clear it. Reschedule all the meetings.”  
  
“Yes, ma’am.”  
  
Plan settled, she turns her attention to the box. Security scans are well and good, but a good enough tech can still hide nasty tricks. Arihnda checks the box over once, herself, and decides it is probably safe. She opens it. She frowns. It holds a pair of… earrings?  
  
Earrings. Two graceful, lustrous, shimmering pearls — probably Alderaanian, she thinks, from the special bluish sheen they have. Earrings, and, she notices, an engraving on the roof of the box.  
  
_the light of lothal’s moons_ _  
_   
Her heart skips a beat, and comes back double-time. The light of Lothal’s moons.   
  
Fulcrum.  
  
A message, perhaps?   
  
Or a threat.  
  
Someone who knows, about the way she’d managed to secure the peace on her planet.  
  
Someone who knows, and is having, perhaps, a bit of fun with her, before they bring the hammer down.  
  
Who would know? Kallus, perhaps? She’d done such work, cleaning out the rats, staffing the Imperial government of Lothal with people she felt she could trust, or at least — but he'd seemed untouchable. And she cannot divine how he feels about anything. Kallus. Perhaps.  
  
Who else? And how, in any case, can she find out without exposing herself?  
  
She loses track of time, suddenly beset by horrible futures, horrible paths all leading to the same —  
  
“Ma’am?”  
  
Jadnah is standing the doorway, frowning a little, worried. Irritating, that. Arihnda sucks in a breath.  
  
“After hours, isn’t it?” she says to Jadnah.  
  
“Yes, ma’am.”  
  
“Are you ready to go?”  
  
“Yes, ma’am.”  
  
“Well, good,” Arihnda says, and sets the pearls aside. Then, rising, she says: “That makes two of us, I suppose. Come along.”  
  
Jadnah falls into step beside her. As they leave the office, ISB Leiutenant Commander Merri Barlin, former Navy personnel and now Arihnda’s personal security attaché, follows them.  
  
“Tell me your impression of Director Krennic,” Arihnda says to Jadnah as they head out of the office, up to the landing pad, to her speeder. This is one of her rules: none of her favorites goes home from the office on their own after the Rowdies are out. She puts too much effort into their development, she tells herself, to risk losing one of them to something as stupid as a malfunctioning turbolift.  
  
Jadnah gives a vague comment or two about Krennic. It’s a little cagey on the criticism, and focused on the wrong things. It is the attempt of a polite teenage girl raised in conservative surroundings to weave a line between honesty and propriety.  
  
“What about his motives, Jadnah?” Arihnda huffs. “You need to think about the details: what people have, what they desire, why they want what they want, what they are willing to do to get it — you have to understand your opponents in politics.”  
  
“I thought — I thought Director Krennic’s plan would increase Lothal’s mining sector?”  
  
“Of course it would, but why in Corellia’s hells would we want that?”  
  
Jadnah flinches, and Arihnda sighs.  
  
“Let’s ask another question,” Arihnda says, sounding a little worn. “Or two questions, if you prefer. First, how might Director Krennic’s plans harm Lothal, rather than benefit it — and by extension, harm our position in the Imperial government? Second, what industries might we prefer to grow, besides mining, and why?”  
  
Merri, having moved ahead of them, smiles just a little. Arihnda catches it as Merri slides into the driver’s seat of the speeder. Arihnda bites the inside of her lip, sourly. So she’s managed a more Thrawn-like response. Fine. Good. That was her objective, anyway.  
  
~*~  
  
“Oh, Jadnah,” Arihnda calls as the girl climbs out of the speeder at her apartment block, “be ready to leave from here ninety minutes early tomorrow. We’ll be skipping the office. Call it a special project day. You need to learn to recognize even the unmarked delivery services.”  
  
Jadnah masters her surprise much faster than she would have done at the start of the summer. _Good girl_ , Arihnda thinks again. 

“Yes, ma’am,” Jadnah says.  
  
Merri keeps her opinion to herself until they’re underway again. “They all turn into special projects at some point or another, don’t they?”  
  
“Mm, yes” says Arihnda, distracted by her data pad. “I’ll have to start giving them all Coruscant Survival Training before I let them leave Lothal.”  
  
Merri laughs. It's a good sound, like a sturdy brass bell. “That could be fun,” she says.  
  
~*~  
  
Thrawn is already in her apartments, in her permanent suite in the Alisandre. Unsurprising, as she is almost two hours late from the office.  
  
He doesn’t seem bothered, though.   
  
“Good evening,” he says when she walks in.  
  
“Hello,” she says, crossing to the couch and climbing into his lap.  
  
It’s all the spoken greeting that’s necessary; everything else is the press of their bodies together, the snaking of her arms around his shoulders, the folding of his arms around her waist, the quiet sound of their breathing as they inhale one another for the first time in three months. They do not kiss, but he does hold her, for a few minutes, quite tightly.   
  
The next time they speak, her face is resting against his chest, and he is talking into her hair.  
  
“An interesting day?” he asks.  
  
“Not really,” she mumbles.  
  
“No?” he sounds almost surprised. She twists her head and peers up at him. He looks back at her curiously — definitely, she thinks, there is a very subtle touch of surprise in that expression.  
  
She frowns.  
  
“You are quite late,” he explains and it sounds a little, strangely, like backtracking.   
  
“Oh,” she says. “I did get a package — Jadnah couldn't recognize the courier. We’re going to correct that tomorrow, or try to.”  
  
He raises an eyebrow, almost expectant. “A package?”  
  
“Earrings. I think… I think it may be a message. A threat. The box was engraved with a variation of Fulcrum’s code-phrase.”  
  
His lips twitch. “Indeed,” he says. For a moment, she has the impression that he is going to laugh, but before she can respond to it, the hint of expression is gone. Perhaps she had been wrong. “And who would know of your little under-the-table handshake?”  
  
“I don’t know,” she says, leaning her head against his chest again.  
  
“Shall we examine the possibilities?” he says, running a hand through her hair. And again, she thinks she hears the very faint hint of humor.  
  
“It’s not funny,” she mutters at him.  
  
“No,” he agrees, sounding suddenly more sober. “No, indeed, if it is a threat that is not amusing at all. But,” he says gently, “perhaps it is not one.”  
  
“No?”  
  
“No. Consider: who knows about that phrase, who might also be moved to send you such a gift?”  
  
Arihnda frowns, and thinks for a minute. The pearls… Alderaanian pearls. “Bail,” she exclaims sharply, lifting her head again. “Bail. His wife has a pair of earrings just like them — remember? I told her how much I liked them. You were there. Last year, on Alderaan, at that little patio reception they had —”  
  
Thrawn is smiling at her strangely, looking bemused. “Yes, I recall,” he says, sounding quite dry, as if he were telling a very funny, very sarcastic joke at her expense.  
  
“I don’t see what’s so funny.”  
  
“Nothing,” he says. “I am only glad you seem to have solved the mystery. You should tell the good Senator, tomorrow, how much you appreciate his gift.”  
  
“I will.”  
  
They look at each other a minute longer: he still looks amused at her expense, and she is still a little puzzled by it. Then his amusement fades into more normal inquisitiveness. “Did anything else of interest happen today?”  
  
“Krennic is sniffing around for still more doonium,” she says, feeling her anger rise like flame. Krennic and his awful boondoggle project, his awful project that Tarkin likes, that the Emperor likes, while Thrawn and his superior ideas are left scratching at the door like a chicken scraping in dirt —  
  
“Not exactly a surprise,” Thrawn says lightly.  
  
“Not at all a surprise,” she snarls. “I’m handling him,” she adds with a huff.  
  
“I trust that you are,” he says smoothly — and that eases her frustration, somewhat. If nothing else, it is as least pleasant for her to be reminded that he trusts her to support the TIE-Defender program. They are still far even from the prototyping stage, but she is determined to see the first round of manufacture come to fruition on Lothal.  
  
The moment of silence has stretched on rather a while. Thrawn’s expression softens a bit, and she feels her shoulders relax in response. He runs a hand through her hair again. “Shall we order something?” he asks.  
  
It’s such a casual question. So strange, that it should move her so much. She buries her face in his chest. “No,” she mumbles, “I’m not hungry.”  
  
“No?”  
  
“No,” she says, still talking into his chest. “I’d just would like to go bed.”  
  
He runs his hand through her hair again. “Would you?”  
  
“Yes.” She tilts her face up, so her chin is resting against him. “Very much.”  
  
~*~  
  
The next morning, Merri arrives only two minutes after Arihnda herself is ready to leave, and they arrive at Jadnah’s apartment block to find the girl standing on the landing pad, shivering in the morning wind.  
  
Her hair is done in the same, just-barely-appropriate fashion, and is already looking windswept. Arihnda rolls down the window of the speeder, but doesn’t open the door. “Fix your hair, and get a jacket,” she snaps.  
  
“Yes, ma’am,” Jadnah bleats before scurrying back into her building. She returns roughly fifteen minutes later, looking much more presentable, and sensible, and Arihnda reaches over to shove the door open for her.  
  
“Tell me what you know about courier services on Coruscant,” Arihnda says as Jadnah clambers into the back seat beside her.  
  
Jadnah is obviously tired, and stifles a yawn and slumps forward, shoulders hunched and spine curved. Sloppy. Lazy.  
  
“I don’t know very mu —” she starts to say.  
  
Arihnda’s hand darts like a snake. “Posture,” she hisses, flicking one manicured finger nastily against the middle of Jadnah’s back.  
  
Jadnah snaps upright. “Yes mom — ma’am,” she corrects herself, turning pink, “I mean ma’am.”  
  
Arihnda ignores it. The first few times this had happened with her junior aides she’d been just as embarrassed as they were, and angry. But since it’s become almost predictable, she’s learned to let it go.  
  
“Coruscanti courier services,” Arihnda says with dull impatience. “Tell me what you know.”  
  
~*~  
  
It isn’t until the end of the day that Arihnda gets a chance to comm Bail. She has some actual business to discuss with him, and at the end of that, she mentions the earrings, obliquely and off-hand.  
  
“Before I forget, I wanted to thank you for your present.”  
  
Bail’s flickering holo shows surprise. “Present?”  
  
And now it is Arihnda’s turn to be surprised, her wariness rushing back, the cold of hand fear coming with it. “Earrings. A pair of pearl earrings, just like Breha’s? You didn’t send them?”  
  
Bail frowns, and shakes his head. “I’m afraid not — not that they wouldn’t look lovely on you, of course, and I do remember you liked them, but I can’t take the credit. I'm sorry.”  
  
“No, Senator,” says Arihnda, already distracted by the renewed puzzle, “I’m sorry for the confusion. I didn’t mean to put you in an awkward position.”  
  
“Not awkward at all. There wasn’t a note?”  
  
“There… there was a note, but it was a bit cryptic. I thought it might have been you.”  
  
Bail is very quiet for a minute. “Short of list of people who it might be, though?”  
  
“I certainly hope the list is short.”  
  
“Do you want me to look into it?”  
  
“No,” says Arihnda slowly, an idea beginning to percolate.  
  
_Who knows about that phrase, who might also be moved to send you such a gift?_ _  
_   
If there hasn’t been some security breach, then the list of people who know the phrase and might send the earrings is very, very short indeed.  
  
“No,” Arihnda says again, “I think I’d like to ask one other person.”  
  
~*~  
  
“Bail didn’t send the earrings,” Arihnda says by way of greeting when Thrawn enters her suite  
  
“No?” Thrawn asks, sounding unconcerned. He tosses his hat and gloves aside. They’re followed in short order by his belt and tunic, making a trail from the doorway to the couch where he sits and goes to work on his boots. “How interesting.”  
  
_A very short list indeed,_ Arihnda thinks, her lip curling nastily. Then she composes herself.  
  
She isn’t very good at faking emotion. Maintaining her calm and behaving with good manners in the face of all sorts of upheavals, yes. Suppressing her feelings are riot and driving other people where she wants with threat or persuasion, yes. But _evincing_ desire and fear and anger and joy when she doesn’t truly feel them? That’s a challenge.  
  
But she’s been getting better at it. Her difficult first year in Tarkin’s service has forced her to get better at it. And she could stand to be better at it still.  
  
So, standing behind the couch, she takes the opportunity to practice.  
  
She starts by hugging her arms around herself, and trying to summon up the same blend of fear and anger she’d felt the day before. The anger is a little bit real.  
  
“I’ve been trying to think who else might know.”  
  
“About the earrings and the passphrase?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Who, indeed,” he says dryly, making her anger flare. “Tell me your list.”  
  
She forces her anger aside, pulls on everything that imitates concern. “Well, then I started thinking the earrings might just be coincidental. Not related to Breha at all.”  
  
“Oh?” Thrawn turns to look at her.  
  
She’s got her brow knit and the corners of her mouth downturned in a moue of concern. It would certainly be enough to fool most of the people she’s ever dealt with. He narrows his eyes at her.  
  
She decides to plunge ahead anyway. “Well – moons, pearls. It might have just been a… visual. Not a reference to the Organas.”  
  
“Indeed.” His eyes are still narrow.  
  
She hugs herself tighter, and tries to summon a little more convincing distress, making it real enough that the act of mastering it seems real, too. “I’ve been trying to figure out which of the Spectres might have told an Imperial, or which Imperial they might have told. They wouldn’t want to give up Fulcrum’s passphrase, so I imagine it must have been under duress of some kind. All the people who I know are angry with me aren’t exactly people they’d be likely to cross paths with. The only candidate I keep coming back to is Kallus. If he does know —”  
  
Thrawn is frowning now, but it’s hard to tell if it’s from concern or irritation. “Would Agent Kallus not have you summarily arrested by the ISB?”  
  
“He knows how close I am to Wullf. Besides, he might want something for himself.” She decides to try and amp the shrill fear a little. “But I can’t think what it might be. I know he suspects me of something, but why he’d want to toy with me like this…”  
  
Thrawn raises an eyebrow, and his lips twitch. “Does he strike you as the vengeful type?”  
  
“I don’t know what type he strikes me as,” Arihnda says, trying to open herself up to a little more vulnerability. “He’s so hard to read, and —”  
  
Thrawn’s mouth twitches again, and then he lets his head fall forward and he laughs, then looks at her. “You can stop, now,” he says, smiling with amusement.  
  
“Oh, I can, can I?” she says, dropping the act in an instant.  
  
“Please, if you would,” he says. Then he looks her up and down and sighs a little. “I presume you figured out that I was your mystery benefactor sometime today?”  
  
“Yes,” she says, arms now crossed peevishly in front of her. “I figured it out while talking to Bail. You’re the only two who know about the earrings and the rest of it, and since he didn’t send them… But I’m quite angry at you for playing this little game instead of just telling me yesterday, when you saw I was upset.”  
  
“I believe I did tell you yesterday — who would know and be moved to send a gift?”  
  
“You didn’t correct me when I guessed it was Bail.”  
  
There is a short silence, and then he finally allows: “You will forgive me for being somewhat irritated that you thought of Senator Organa before you thought of me.”  
  
_Oh,_ she thinks, with a little pang of guilt. And she says “Oh” aloud as well, her arms unfolding from across her chest to hang loosely at her sides.  
  
He reaches over the back of the couch and takes her hand. “I would not have left you in distress if you had remained fixated on the idea that it was a threat, I assure you.”  
  
And she does believe that. She squeezes his hand. “I suppose I don’t… think of you as the gift-giving type,” she says almost contritely.  
  
“Clearly,” he says slowly. And then, carefully, he says: “I find it rather insulting that you do not.”  
  
“You’ve made that apparent,” she says. “I suppose I would be insulted, too, in your place.”  
  
Thrawn laughs again, briefly. “Yes, I imagine you would be.”  
  
“Mm,” she says, noncommittal. Then she asks: “Did I fool you at all?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Oh, thank you,” she says sarcastically.  
  
“Would you like to know what gave it away?”  
  
“I’m sure you’ll tell me,” she says dryly.  
  
“You heart rate. It should rise more with excitation, and make your temperature rise with it. And your breathing should become more erratic.”  
  
“Oh? Is that what should happen _with excitation?_ ”  
  
“It is. I can, of course, help demonstrate the point,” he says lightly.  
  
She looks him up and down, then takes a step forward and swings herself over the back of the couch to settle next to him. “I think you’d better.” She leans forward to kiss him, then stops. “And before I forget, Commodore – thank you for the gift.”

He smiles at that — a small, soft curve of his lips, that softens his whole, wry expression — and runs a finger along the side of her face. “Next time,” he murmurs, “I will sign it.”


End file.
